With Scary Movie 3, the assignment of directing has been passed from Keenen Ivory Wayans to Airplane!’s David Zucker, which is a big step forward right there. (Zucker isn’t much of a director, either, but at least he has ideas on how to shape a scene, and is actually pretty adept at making his film parodies look like the films they’re parodying.) Plus, any time Zucker and company are satirizing the outrageous pomposity of M. Night Shymalan, whose Signs receives – and deserves – particularly harsh treatment here, Scary Movie 3 is everything you want a movie spoof to be: smart, funny, and more than a little mean. (And heartening – until now, I thought I was the only one who detested Shymalan’s “Hitchcockian” appearance as the vet who accidentally kills Mel Gibson’s wife in Signs.) The wide-eyed, appealing Anna Faris returns as the lead, ably satirizing Naomi Watts’ reporter from The Ring, and comic actors such as Charlie Sheen, Jeremy Piven, Queen Latifah, Camryn Manheim, and legendary spoofster Leslie Nielsen all score some laughs. So why is Scary Movie 3 still so disappointing?

It’s tempting to say that in Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s complex, heartbreaking adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s terrific murder mystery, Sean Penn gives the most nuanced approximation of grief to be found anywhere in modern movies.

Miramax’s decision to release Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill in two installments was probably smart, as it’ll inevitably boost the film’s collective box-office intake and doesn’t require audiences to commit, all at once, to a three-and-a-half-hour homage to Japanese samurai flicks.

]]>mike@rcreader.com (Mike Schulz)ReviewsWed, 15 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000"The School of Rock" One of the Year’s Biggest and Best Surprises: Also, "Never Get Outta the Boat," "Lost in Translation," "Under the Tuscan Sun," and "Luther"http://www.rcreader.com/movies/school-of-rock-one-of/
http://www.rcreader.com/movies/school-of-rock-one-of/THE SCHOOL OF ROCK

I’ve seen Sidney Poitier do it. I’ve seen Robin Williams do it. I’ve seen Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Edward James Olmos ... hell, I’ve seen Dame Maggie Smith do it. But I have never seen an actor playing The Inspirational Teacher connect with his students as believably, and oddly beautifully, as Jack Black does in The School of Rock.
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I have always considered it a personal mission to convince people that documentaries can actually be fun – recently, I enjoyed a hard-won victory when my mother (who, as she is wont to say, “gets enough drama in life”) acceded to watch Bowling for Columbine and found herself liking it – and, bless their hearts, the folks at the Brew & View appear to as well.

As a lifelong fan of Woody Allen’s cinematic oeuvre, the last five years have been rather painful. Sure, Small Time Crooks was a lot of fun and Sean Penn delivered a truly inspired performance in Sweet & Lowdown, but The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, though intermittently amusing, felt pretty stale, and Celebrity and last year’s Hollywood Ending were just plain awful. (Part of being a true fan includes admitting when your heroes fail, and feeling somewhat heartbroken when they do.)

]]>mike@rcreader.com (Mike Schulz)ReviewsWed, 24 Sep 2003 00:00:00 +0000"Matchstick Men" Feels Like a Con: Also, "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," "Owning Mahowny," and "The Order"http://www.rcreader.com/movies/matchstick-men-feels-like/
http://www.rcreader.com/movies/matchstick-men-feels-like/MATCHSTICK MEN

Ostensibly, Ridley Scott’s dramatic comedy Matchstick Men deals with Roy (Nicolas Cage), a professional con artist, connecting with Angela (Alison Lohman), the 14-year-old daughter he never knew he had, and trying to better himself as a father figure.

Among its many, many virtues, what I loved most about Niki Caro’s Whale Rider is its toughness. In the past year, we’ve seen so many variants on the ethnic-female-overcoming-her-family’s-prejudices theme – My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Real Women Have Curves, Bend It Like Beckham – that the idea of sitting through another one, even one set on a staggeringly gorgeous New Zealand seaside, filled me with more ennui than expectation.

]]>mike@rcreader.com (Mike Schulz)ReviewsWed, 10 Sep 2003 00:00:00 +0000Summer Movies 2003: Top 25 Grossershttp://www.rcreader.com/movies/summer-movies-2003-top-25/
http://www.rcreader.com/movies/summer-movies-2003-top-25/AMERICAN WEDDING– I know a lot of people get a kick out of these guys, but if, like me, you’re tired of viewing nebbishy Jason Biggs’ outré sexual humiliations and Seann William Scott’s compulsive need to swallow things that should be coming out of a human body, this’ll be a very tiresome follow-up indeed. Boasting insanely contrived gross-outs and phony “sincerity,” this second sequel reeks of contract obligation; even Scott’s facial-muscle contortions feel phoned-in. With the wasted talents of Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, and Jennifer Coolidge ... where the hell is Christopher Guest when we need him?